{"id":32913,"date":"2017-05-12T01:00:16","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T05:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32913"},"modified":"2017-05-02T09:54:16","modified_gmt":"2017-05-02T13:54:16","slug":"qotd-dont-talk-to-the-police-without-legal-counsel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/05\/12\/qotd-dont-talk-to-the-police-without-legal-counsel\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Don’t talk to the police without legal counsel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDon\u2019t talk to law enforcement without consulting a lawyer\u201d is simple advice. Anyone can follow it. Most of us understand why it\u2019s a good idea. But too many people reject the advice because of a common and misplaced fear. It\u2019s the fear that if they don\u2019t return that detective\u2019s call immediately, if they don\u2019t invite the FBI agents at their door in and answer their questions, if they don\u2019t cooperate, they will be seen as the sort of person who wants a lawyer<\/em>. They will be seen as someone suspicious<\/em>. They will lose the opportunity to \u201cclear all this up\u201d<\/em> by \u201ccooperating.\u201d<\/p>\n

If I say I want to talk to a lawyer, won\u2019t I make things worse?<\/em><\/p>\n

No. Almost certainly not.<\/p>\n

When you view any interaction as your only opportunity to \u201ccooperate,\u201d you\u2019re accepting a false premise, a law enforcement pressure tactic calculated to get you to act against your best interests and better judgment. On television, cops constantly tell suspects \u201cyou have to talk now, talk first, or we\u2019ll give a deal to your buddy.\u201d On television, that proposition is presented as true. But real life isn\u2019t like television. In real life, that \u201cnow or never\u201d proposition is almost always false. In 21 years practicing criminal law, I have never<\/strong> seen a circumstance where stopping the interview and talking to a lawyer would have destroyed someone\u2019s opportunity to talk to law enforcement and resulted in harm to their best interests. There\u2019s always been another chance, once the client has talked to a lawyer and taken advantage of competent advice about the situation.<\/p>\n

The police want you to talk immediately, now, when they are unexpectedly at your front door. They want you to be startled, nervous, out-of-sorts. They want you to blurt things out \u2014 either admit true things that they can use against you, or make false statements that they can disprove and use to show you\u2019re a liar. They don\u2019t want you to have time to collect your thoughts, to refresh your memory about the events they are asking about, to look at any relevant documents or evidence, or to figure out the legal significance of the situation. The police know<\/em> that\u2019s against your best interests. They know<\/em> that you should talk to a lawyer first. How do you know that they know that? You know because police officers consistently push for state laws and union rules allowing them<\/em> to talk to a lawyer, review evidence, and take advantage of a waiting period before being interviewed about use-of-force incidents.<\/p>\n

Good people \u2014 honest people \u2014 tend to think \u201cI\u2019ve done nothing wrong, so if I tell the truth now, I can clear this up.\u201d They think \u201ctalking can\u2019t hurt me because I haven\u2019t done anything wrong, and because I won\u2019t lie.\u201d It would be wonderful if that were true, but it\u2019s not. <\/p>\n

Ken White, “‘If I Just Talk To The Police I Can Clear This Up’ \u2014 The Dangerous Delusion”, Brown, White & Osborn<\/em><\/a>, 2015-09-24.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDon\u2019t talk to law enforcement without consulting a lawyer\u201d is simple advice. Anyone can follow it. Most of us understand why it\u2019s a good idea. But too many people reject the advice because of a common and misplaced fear. It\u2019s the fear that if they don\u2019t return that detective\u2019s call immediately, if they don\u2019t invite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,41,13],"tags":[343,529,98],"class_list":["post-32913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-liberty","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-lawyers","tag-police"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8yR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32913"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32915,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32913\/revisions\/32915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}